Reuters decided its report should include something indirectly related:
Earlier this month, witnesses reported seeing a black bear sow and her two cubs rummaging in an outdoor trash receptacle at a Burger King restaurant in Eagle, Colorado. The spectacle attracted a crowd, and at least two people were seen feeding the bruins hamburgers.
It's hard to have any long-term faith in a nation which produces even two (there were probably more) such cretins in one small town. The connection isn't hard to make: People feed bear. Bear learns people equal food. Very bad.)
Then there is the factor of knowledge transference and projection, just a fancy way of saying you can apply the lessons of one situation to similar ones. The human zipiddydoodahs hovering around the restaurant trash didn't learn the basic lesson, so they won't have a clue when we warn them:
"When you see a bunch of elected officials hovering around the Burger King garbage, do not feed them. If you do, they'll soon be in your tent, chomping on private parts. Very bad."
It's hard to have any long-term faith in a nation which produces even two (there were probably more) such cretins in one small town. The connection isn't hard to make: People feed bear. Bear learns people equal food. Very bad.)
Then there is the factor of knowledge transference and projection, just a fancy way of saying you can apply the lessons of one situation to similar ones. The human zipiddydoodahs hovering around the restaurant trash didn't learn the basic lesson, so they won't have a clue when we warn them:
"When you see a bunch of elected officials hovering around the Burger King garbage, do not feed them. If you do, they'll soon be in your tent, chomping on private parts. Very bad."
4 comments:
I saw this in action last weekend at the Grand Canyon. Two bull elk wandered onto the grounds at El Tovar to dine on the delicious shrubberies and fortunately the aptly-named Wildlife Protection Unit turned up to protect the wapiti from the strobe-flashing hordes. (And, vice versa, but I'm sure that's just a fringe benefit.) Hey, guys, this ain't a deer park, and them big guys AIN'T tame.
Likewise, I saw some truly horrifying behavior elsewhere in the park. Apparently the law of gravity doesn't apply to park visitors, judging by their cavalier approach to the Edge of Nothingness. And in a rainstorm, to boot. Hey, Francois? Dieter? Otmar? See if your foreign-to-English dictionary has an entry under "sliprock" and then ponder why those formidable steel barricades are where they are, okay?
My favorite tourist moment was at Yellowstone some years back where an Asian gentleman was urging his companion into getting into frame with a buffalo minding his own business grazing by the roadside. She was understandably hesitant approaching something larger and heavier than their rental car, but he was insistent. She went along with the gag right up to the point were the bull had decided he'd had enough, lowered his head, pawed the ground, and snorted loudly enough to raise cartoonish dust clouds. At that point she turned, sidled *carefully* back to the road, and informed M. Cartier-Bresson in the Universal Language that he could stick his Minolta where the sun don't shine, and if he didn't she'd do it for him. At least she showed more mother wit than the ones who step off the duckboards to get a better shot and break through the crust and turn into Tourist Fries.
Sigh. I don't know how the rangers do it. I guess that's why they're not armed.
I liked your MC's comment in another forum that maybe foreigners shouldn't be allowed in our national parks. :)
One of these days I'm going to repost an OY piece from years ago about some Sons of Heaven visitors who insulted JJ, the tri-lingual black lab, in Yellowstone.
I'm always honored to inspire genius.
Disney Syndrome at work. Down at the Wichita Mountains Refuge near Lawton, every year at least one tourist gets gored or stomped or both when they decide to get a REAL closeup of a buffalo or longhorn. Or, demonstrating even less intelligence, a buffalo calf.
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